Archive for the ‘SketchUp’ Category

En means “flame” in Japanese. The restaurant is centered on the display cooking area in the kitchen. For this reason, we moved away from the traditional idea of a Japaness restaurant and revealed the kitchen and activity to the street. The design needed to be engaging because it is tucked away at the dead end of an alleyway in Ho Chi Minh’s Japanese area, Le Thanh Ton St..

In an existing Loures villa was introduce three different dwelling areas. This areas were united morphologically and structurally through the treatment of void areas and zenithal windows.

The spatial organization was adapted to the existing typological structure giving rise to new spaces revealing the potential of pre-existing ones. These intervention lives of small subtleties, such as the variation of the different heights, zenithal windows and by small touches on the use of color.

The project was to construct an indoor sports arena in an already existing urban environment. The challenge was to find the right architectural connection and identity between the existing structures and the new building. The functions of the new building, its dance hall, gym and lecture halls were different from that of the existing buildings and finding the right balance became a key priority. The new indoor arena is pressed into the landscape and solidly grounded in order to ensure that the structure is kept on the same horizontal level as the existing structures. Pockets of light and air have been constructed to underline the different levels and dimensions of the surrounding landscape and the creation of layers in the façade to the Northwest is constructed in order to connect the exterior with the interior of the building. NOBIS’ façade reveals an inner secret, an inner structure and a layered structure to form an arena that serve as the surrounding structure for the game on the pitch. The layered construction of the faced is made up of ‘translucent polycarbons and expanded metalthat has a shading effect. The choice of materials ensures that the light in the arena is always changing and somewhat diffuse. The arena has a uniformed façade that leaves a different visual impression depending on the amount of light both inside and outside. On the backside of the Northwest end of the façade the columns and beams are revealed. The Arena is a place made for ‘combat’ – for physical challenges and heated matches – set within raw and bare columns.

This is a renovation project of an apartment in downtown Tokyo. The client said unintentionally that they want to spend a brilliant time together nowhere else but in their house. Then I thought, “Indeed”. I always find that houses around us are way too far from the reality of each family life and communities, and they all look alike. It seems as if there were no identity in family life, which is ridiculous.

Our clients wanted a four-bedroom house with large public spaces that would open onto a constrained suburban site near downtown Raleigh. The existing site was long north to south and sloped down to the street on the north side. A stream bisected the site near the street, and the associated floodplain precluded construction on the front half of the property. A dramatic slope at the rear of the site prevented locating the house far back on the property. Our response to these constraints was a compact, two-story “L” that creates an private outdoor space between the house and the hillside.

The Corbett Residence is on a wooded site, down a winding drive. The drive is thin and meanders between trees to protect the house from view. The house is a low black box that strikes a line across the slope, mimicking the horizon. The house is at the edge of a hill, above a creek, and is oriented to admit light and views of the forest. At the east end of the house, the master bedroom looks out to a large red oak and fern glade. Our clients, who are restrained, contributed beautiful ideas and challenged us to express necessity.

Urban renewal is an act which has to be carefully planned noting its reflections to the city, and, comes up as a process which has to be managed with balance while putting a road map where all the shareholders (people, planners, architects, engineers, contractors, etc.) of the city work together.

The idea was to plan a building which is dedicated to jazz. It was a challenge to bring the two disciplines together as jazzmusic works with improvisation and serendipity while architecture seaks to avoid random and tries to plan and fix things to make them persist. The second question was how to integrate a new building into the grown city structure of the old town in Basel. During our research we realized that the plan of the buildings on the site hasn’t changed much during centuries although the buildings themselves were exchanged several times. So we decided to believe in the “architecture-trouvée” and create the building’s volume on the base of the old citymap. The result is a diverse volume with a courtyard in the center.